Primary Colors (Slight Return)

It's interesting how the two most prominent political outcomes this year so far have been so willfully misconstrued by the media dupes.

First you had Eric Cantor, whose district had been redrawn more rural and red than it had been. This turned out to be a disaster for Cantor, whose applecart got overturned by some Randian yabbo from a small private college. Could this be the resurgence of the teabaggers, or simply a case of a low-foreheadvote turnout, a challenger who had a decent ground game, and an incumbent who so took his victory for granted, he spent over $160k schmoozing in steakhouses instead of glad-handing the rubes in his district? Much discussion was had over the various possible causes, thus ensuring that many boner pills and insurance policies got sold.

More recently you had the primary runoff in America's most useless state, Mississippi, between ancient pork-chaser Thad Cochran and another in the endless procession of teahadis, Chris McDaniel. It's actually a damned shame McDaniel didn't win, because it would have been hilarious to watch him try to turn the pork off. No fuckin' way, champ, yours is a state that produces only two things:  jack and shit. If it weren't for the rest of the country supporting your welfare state, Mississippi would be nothing but a couple of football colleges and a Faulkner museum, surrounded by subsistence farmers.

So both these electoral outcomes were framed, as these things tend to be nowadays, as responses specifically to the teabaggers. (And yes, I refuse to call them by their preferred name, because it's stupid, because it doesn't mean what they think it means, and mostly because they won't stop acting like petulant assholes.) Cantor's defeat was a jumbled mess of analysis, but the upshot was that the insurgent won, which could only mean a repudiation of "establishment" mores. Cochran's squeaker victory, on the other hand, proved how establishment Republicans -- with a little help from Democratic "friends" -- could beat back this insurgent tide.

As you might imagine, I have a different interpretation than the people whose paychecks depend on peddling the conventional interpretation of things. Politics is an industry, pure and simple, from the pols themselves to the donors, the lobbyists, the cable news networks, the dipshit analysts who never get anything right but still keep their jobs, the massive amounts of commercial time sold, etc., etc. There's a lot of money involved here; there's a tremendous amount of energy and effort and pelf that goes into manufacturing all that consent.

This is really about incumbency. Industries rely on stability and predictability, being able to make solid projections and plan strategy accordingly, so as to optimize profit. So when politicians with incumbency ratings normally associated with third-world despots suddenly find themselves challenged or even defeated, the point-one-percenters who put them there get fidgety.

They don't care about chumps like David Brat or Chris McDaniel particularly -- they can either pay those guys to go along with the program, or make sure they get nothing done and then bankroll the next primary challenger. Everyone's a revolutionary until they start getting paid.

What the owners care about is the idea that the peons might start thinking that they actually have a choice in these things. Everything about the system is designed specifically to keep the peons out of the process, the obvious barriers to entry being cash in hand and net worth. So when some rabble-rouser comes along and disrupts the industry's stability and predictability, they don't like it. It makes them nervous.

And I'm really not sure why it does, or should, make anyone nervous. The incumbents aren't going anywhere, the percentage will still remain comically high. Business will proceed as usual. Rick Perry will have a few more unforced errors, which will embolden the faithful and enrage the unbelievers, but will only sway the backers insofar as it affects Perry's actual poll ratings, his ability to get elected and carry out their agenda.

Some other clown-shoes psychopath will step of the primordial ooze of the primary system and get the support of Perry and the rest of the moron claque, and the operational plan will continue apace. The Republican voters will continue to fabricate and exaggerate, and the Democratic voters will nag their doubters with threats of another 15 years of Nader-baiting, since we can all see what a slam-bang job they've done keeping abortion legal and the median wage stagnant for forty years now.

Font of Sorrows

It's fascinating to think that just about every major event that has taken place in the past century can be traced directly back to the actions of a gang of Serbian anarchists against a relatively minor Austrian noble. I've always been a big fan of alternative and speculative history, but when push comes to shove, there's nothing like the real thing.

#thanksobama #gavriloprincip
 

Deep Thoughts (World Cup Edition)

For the most part, I can take or leave soccer, though I used to check out English Premier League back when I had a pirate satellite card, and the World Cup matches are enjoyable enough. Still, sports in general, from the NCAA to the NFL to the Olympics to the World Cup and on and on, make me feel guilty anymore. The athletes are either indentured servants (as in the NCAA) or impossibly wealthy, playing in stadia built for asshole billionaires by gullible and/or captive taxpayers, with the empty promise of good jobs dangled before them like a hologram carrot.

As Brazil is, like it or not, an overpopulated Third World hellhole, its corrupt government has, in preparation for this year's World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics (but it will be winter there, as it is now -- discuss!), expended no small amounts of pelf and brute force, flash-building huge venues out in the Amazon jungle, and clearing slums with abandon. More things to feel complicit in, which is a shame. There's an abundance of valuable things to be learned from various sports, but money -- or more specifically, greed -- ruins everything.

We spectators, demanding our circuses if we can't have the bread to go with them, are accessories to all of it -- the indentured servitude of college athletes, the blown-out knees and CTE concussions of the NFL, the almost literal slavery of the cheerleaders, the fleecing of the taxpayers, the destruction of the cities that outbid everyone else for these white elephants. At least cities are finally starting to get wise to the Olympic racket, as the IOC and FIFA are in perpetual deadlock for most corrupt sports organization.

Also, too -- that fucking weirdo donkey-biter from Uruguay? Let him play, but with a Bane mask over his mouth. I don't know what that dude's problem is, but I'm surprised someone hasn't just turned and started swinging straight for his chompers. Let's see how well you gum your opponents, asshole.

Primary Colors

It's difficult to decide exactly what is the most tedious aspect of Blind Lemon Clinton's will-she-or-won't-she pas de dunce:

• the sheer inevitability of her candidacy (and really, the "my turn" campaign is usually a Republican thing);
• the shameless crying of poor mouth, at a country still reeling from an economic setback caused in great part by, um, the repeal of Glass-Steagall;
• the promise that Preznit Hillary will sell out the working class almost as quickly as your garden-variety Koch-sucker;
• the predictable scramble by the overpaid talking heads to provide their breathless analyses of loose cocktail party chatter;
• the continued use of "commentary" from proven shitbirds like Newt Gingrich, whose peanut-gallery bullshit will be exactly the sort of thing that nudges nauseated fence-sitters -- who will by then be exploring real estate in Croatia at the prospect of being "given" a "choice" between Clinton and yet another Bush -- over to Clinton, so we can get pretty much what we were going to get in the first place.

Oh, just run already, dear, it'll be a historic moment and all that. Not because of the woman thing -- hell, even a woman-hating country like Pakistan has had a female president already -- but because the bottom is falling out of this country, the foundation is giving way. The transnational merchant princes won, in no small part thanks to Hillary's husband Rubinizing the economy and leaving it the exclusive province of the sociopathic spreadsheet diddlers.

Perhaps the Clintons genuinely thought that the rising tide would lift all boats, that massive productivity gains and ease of financial regulations and securitization would create enough wealth for all. And it did, to a point. But left in the hands of a greedy few, for whom the word "enough" has no definition, even crumbs stopped falling from the table. Obama hasn't had the testicular fortitude or the juice to do anything about any of this, and will most likely be rendered as lame a duck after the midterms as Saint Billy Jeff was.

Say what you will about the teahadis -- FSM knows I've said my share -- but one important part of their argument that actually resonates is that their country has been taken away from them, and no one in Warshington gives a shit about them. Of course, their country has been taken away from them by the bottomless rackets that run this country, and own the media, so as to convince them that it was gays and illegals that did it, but whatever. The core is true enough.

So it will be a(n) historic moment, no doubt. The next president will get to preside over the continuing implosion of a once-vibrant republic, a society that actually gave a shit whether its children could read or count, communities that understood the nature of community and mutual good, businesses that actually paid their employees enough to survive on, to purchase the things they made or sold.

For a time I thought there might be some catalyzing domestic incident that expressed this discontent on a large scale, not necessarily violent, but something that would be apparent to all. It seemed like the Occupy Wall Street movement might be just the thing, but sure as shit, the corporate toadies rushed to their battlements to marginalize and defame these people, while the NYPD let every scumbag they could out of jail and set them loose in the park.

People are simply too atomized anymore, connected electronically, but not socially enough to translate into any meaningful action. The cops are paramilitarized to the teeth, and get away with pretty much anything anymore, so there's no percentage there either. There's not really anywhere to turn -- either you get lucky and generate enough multiple revenue streams to eke your way through what passes for a life, addled by pills and distracted by sports and reality shows, or get pulled under, quickly or slowly, the result is the same.

So here you go, Hillary, congratulations. How do you like it?

Best of Breed

Usually one encounters magical thinking in a cloak of a conservative stripe, such as Iraq War dead-enders from the Cheney regime. Religious wingnuts who quite literally believe and expect that their invisible buddy, the same guy who lets infinite, routine evil take place every day and everywhere, is looking out for them, if only they believe correctly and sufficiently. Climate-change deniers, birthers, people who are simultaneously convinced that Obama is both singularly dumb and inept, yet cunning and ruthless enough to pull off incredibly baroque conspiracies. You know the type.

There are liberal magical thinkers as well, and one of the more interesting types is the bien pensant reproductive rights absolutist, the pastry-brained doofuses who will write impassioned defenses of the "rights" of people who refuse to take personal responsibility for their lives, yet have nothing to say at all for the rest of society, who are forced to financially support those rights.

This is just awesome:

“When we first had the twins, the only person in my family getting aid was my oldest son,” she said. “We didn’t have money to buy them car seats to get home [from the hospital]. …We didn’t have money to pay for diapers, wipes, shampoos, and toiletries. … I am here to tell you that I am trying my best to be a great mom. I do not need to be punished for deciding to have children.”

Right, so let's punish everyone else by making them foot the bill for your "decisions". Is that how this works? Setting aside the fact that, in California and most other large states, car seats are free through the WIC program, there is this tone, this preening tone of expectation on the part of both subject and writer. They were owed this stuff, see.

Lady, I doubt most people care whether you "decide" to have two or four or ten children. I don't, except to the extent that the planet is already overcrowded with the human virus. But the tacit deal that you accept when you sign up for public assistance is that you're in a bit of a hole, and so maybe it's time you stop digging. Is it too much to ask that you at least put down the shovel?

I get that what families receive on CalWORKs or CalFresh or TANF is a relative pittance, and that compared to what corporations and super-wealthy individuals skip out on tax-wise, it's practically nothing. Still, there is something immensely off-putting about someone complaining about having to wait in line for free shit. I know, if I drop it by your house during my lunch hour from work, would that be easier on you, dear? I mean, come on. Birth control is free. No one is making you have kids you can't afford. There is no excuse for this nonsense.

But what's worse is the insinuation by the writer of the article that the family cap is just eugenics in a different guise. Old wine, new bottles, yada yada. Well, bullshit. I sure as hell couldn't care less about race as it pertains to this issue, and I doubt most people do either. What I care about is working my ass off to just get by, and having 25% taken off the top of my measly paycheck, getting nothing for it, and these people fucking complain about stuff being given to them.

Or the deadbeat douchebag who got incentivized into doing the planet a favor and getting a vasectomy, only after having seven or eight kids by almost as many women. This too apparently is the nose of the eugenics camel poking into the proverbial tent. Why does Melissa Ortiz get to "decide" to have more kids that she can't afford, and the rest of us can't "decide" in turn that we shouldn't have to support them for her? Why does everyone else have to pay for a dipshit like Jesse Lee Herald (who is white, btw) to mindlessly spray his seed into every available orifice? Hell, if anything, this should be standard procedure. If there's one thing the world could use less of, it's freeloading dipshits.

Flying Spaghetti Monster knows I shudder at the prospect of being on the same side of an issue -- any issue -- as the denizens of the feces-throwing Faux News monkey house. I don't want to be on the same side of anything as Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. But goddammit, I think working-class taxpayers are being squeezed quite enough, thank you. Anyone between 40-50 years of age is already looking at a royal reaming in the decade to come, as retiring boomers hoover up the medical and Social Security dollars. The goalposts will get moved on us, because we should have to retire later and poorer so those motherfuckers can get their hip replacements. And we'll get jack shit in return.

And to add insult to injury, we're supposed to just sit by and subsidize people who refuse to get out of their own way. Well, forgive me if I politely decline. I'm absolutely in favor of helping people who have had a run of bad luck, are doing what they can to get rolling again. I'm glad there is a safety net for those folks, and it should stay there, and in fact be increased to some extent (increased funding, better job training). And I've talked to them personally, listened to them while they break down over losing their jobs, having a spouse fighting cancer, any number of things. It breaks your heart. They want to get back to what they've earned, and I hope we continue to help them as much as possible. But that's not who we're talking about here.

So in the meantime, perhaps the folks that can control the major aspects of their lives -- such as whether or not to have four kids while on the dole -- should start taking a little responsibility for themselves. I have very little patience for that "tough love" shit, the Dr. Phil sort of hectoring at hapless bumpkins who never got the memo about impulse control and decision making. But this is one of those times when it's true. No one's proposing to bring back Buck v. Bell, but there is an expectation that people make an honest effort to pull their own weight.

This is one of those externalities of the vaunted "post-scarcity" society we have apparently sought as a by-product of globalizing outputs through Third World despotisms. But the thing is, when you have more people than you have things for them to do, you have to be careful about the activities you continue to incentivize. I mean, if someone's willing to pay me to sit around and fuck all day, I'll take their money. But as misanthropic as I am, I'd like to think that even the average 'murkin is at least smarter than that.

Mitt Happens 2: The Mittening

Despite the breathless tone of this article, I seriously doubt Mitt "Mitt" Rmoney would consider lowering himself to the indignity of running for Lord of the Peons again. There's far more precious pelf to be made as a kingmaker, hence the "ideas summit," where the occupants of the next Gooper clown car converge to ponder newer and better ways in which to separate morons from their personal belongings.

With the recent passing of Eric Cantor to K Street nirvana, the Republicans have themselves in a dilly of a pickle. The teabagger hyena they thought they had on a leash has gotten loose, and is rabid, and once enough of the public has been alienated from their nonsensical "uh wants muh country back" jabber, is going to ruin their brand, at least until the Democrats find a way to fuck up their end of it all, which they inevitably do. (Depending, of course, whether one chooses to believe that these things are mistakes or designs.)

To the extent that "conservatives," regardless of their wealth or social standing, tend to see poor people as another species, Rmoney's defining characteristic is that he underscores such a sentiment. The Mittster is indeed the apotheosis of the clueless swell, born on third base and bragging that he hit a triple, and seeing the less fortunate as some vile combination of stupid and lazy.

If there is ever a time where enough people get sick and tired of being treated like shit by a tiny elite that literally thinks they're better and superior in every way, it will be because of that sentiment, that assumption of stupid-lazy on the part of teh poorz. For now, there are enough of the downtrodden who prefer to remain merely envious of the idle rich, because they still hold out hope that they might join them, than to simply see what's been right in front of them all along, and get royally pissed.

In the meantime, here are the people you get to pretend to choose from in a couple of years. How do you like them apples, America?

A Good Use for Drones

Kill all poachers. Fucking end them already. It would be nice to get the scumbags who buy the products as well. I have no sympathy for any of them. I hope they all die, the sooner the better. Find a commercial or ornamental use for their body parts.

Misdiagnosis

So now that Very Important People are showing how aware they are of this inequality thing, alarums have been raised, and remedies proposed. Here OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria throws some ideas into the ring for consideration:

Main remedies are activation policies, meaning get services in the governments that will get the people who are unemployed or seeking for employment with the job opportunities.

This is not being done enough. The United States spends one-fourth of what the rest of the OECD countries spend on this particular service, getting the unemployed or seeking employment with the employment opportunities.

Second, skills, education and skills. There’s a big mismatch between the skills and what the market is demanding. Therefore, your — you have people have diplomas, but they can’t do very much with it. Third, use a tax structure and use a budget in order to support companies that may be providing jobs or better opportunities.

And last but not least, remember, this is a problem that is affecting the capacity of the United States to get the people at the lowest revenue levels and at the lowest education levels to get up in the ladder, in the social ladder, in the ladder of opportunities.

Ah, the fabled "ladder of opportunities," esteemed tool of the privileged class who long ago pulled it up after using it. Look, Angel, chanting "jobs" and "education" like some oligarchist mantra means nothing at all when there are few jobs worth having anymore, far too many individuals chasing all of those jobs, and higher education is a fucking racket.

The implicit promise of the "jobs 'n' college" evangelists is that those things work hand-in-hand to improve the lives of individuals. And that's how it should work, certainly.

But the reality of it is that rather than a promise, it's more of a threat -- that if you don't go to college, and set yourself up for 10-15 years of indentured servitude in order to pay off the costs of said college, after which maybe you can start making real money, if there's enough jobs in your area, etc., etc., you're screwed.

These rackets serve not only to enrich the coffers of those who run them and profit from them, but they serve an ancillary purpose -- the masses of people who are herded into these rackets, and get on the financial hook, are instantly rendered compliant, complicit in the racket. They now have a vested interest to not be disruptive, to not ask too many questions -- or the wrong questions, such as why wages stagnated while productivity doubled, why the only people to profit during the so-called Great Recession were the already wealthy, why the "practical" thing to do with the one life you've been given is to be some indentured wage slave to some bastard who will fuck you over at the first opportunity, if it will make his stock portfolio go up a quarter of a point.

They don't want you asking questions, or protesting your ration of crumbs -- not that it matters; should you find the sack to get on your hind legs and say something out loud they'll just send Erin Burnett or some other water-carrier down to make fun of you, marginalize you before your plaint even gets a fair hearing.

They would prefer that you either go along to get along, or just say "fuck it" and give up your eternal tilt at an indifferent windmill. I don't think it can be overstated, how little the elites give a red-hot monkey-fuck about you, your families, your communities, your country. Make no mistake, as far as they're concerned, you're either a tool for them to use, or an impediment to their efforts. That is the extent of what you are to the people who actually run this country, run the world.

Serious People jabber about this condition of persistent, escalating inequality, make modest proposals, hem and haw as if this is some trick of the tail, a logistical impossibility to correct. Folks, it is almost heartbreakingly simple, and it does not have to involve tumbrels and guillotines (though you'll get no argument from me should it go in that direction).

The mechanics of a capitalist society, to the extent that we still live in a truly capitalist society, are premised on carrots and sticks, incentives and disincentives. Ideally (heh), the carrots and sticks should be applied as needed, regardless of the situation. From a purely systems analysis perspective, it's not supposed to be a question of who applies those carrots and sticks, so much as what applies them. In systems dynamics, they are applied to optimize the overall efficiency of the system.

In the post-World War 2 era, it worked that way for a few decades. Americans of that time realized that an empowered working class spent its money on goods and services, thus enriching the companies who produced those things. Rich people paid taxes, and paid their workers a wage they could live on and spend money on. It was tacitly understood by all that incentives and disincentives would be applied by the system to keep the machine humming.

But as you may have noticed, it no longer works that way. Rich people and corporations get carrots, everyone else gets sticks. There is nothing resembling even application. This is because the system is no longer run and maintained by systems people, relatively non- or bi-partisan people who understand the utilitarian notion of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

In deregulating the finance and lobbying industries, Saint Reagan essentially sold the system to the elite money class, who of course simply run it for their own benefit -- and everyone else's detriment. It is not enough for them to gain, everyone else must lose in the process. Saint Clinton continued this new dynamic and globalized it, put the final nail in the coffin with the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Bush the Lesser drove the cock home with the jackhammer fury of a thousand Ron Jeremys, Obama has done jack shit to remove said cock, and if you think either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush will ever consider not doing whatever Wall Street tells them to, you should really stop huffing industrial solvents.

On and on it goes. It will continue, probably worsen for most. It will not change, no matter how much you wish, no matter how fervently you participate in the useless voting ritual. It is true that only one party wants to get rid of the EPA, Department of Education, the minimum wage, a woman's right to choose, and so on. But it is also true that neither party will ever stand up to the people who have perpetrated this economic monstrosity that pervades everything else, not even a little bit.

I feel like a broken record most times anymore, bringing up this topic. Not because I'm bored with it -- far from it. I'm utterly fascinated by this tiny claque of transnational merchant princes, who actively -- deliberately, mind you -- are on an open mission to fuck this country over, and everyone in it. I'm fascinated by people who have more money than they could ever spend, and yet it's still not enough for them. I'm amazed by people who look at the millions of lives they adversely affect as some big fucking game.

I'm fascinated by the poor people that these soulless fuckers rook into voting against themselves, an enormous swath of chickens who can't wait to enthusiastically show their support for good ol' Colonel Sanders. How could you not find these people interesting. how could anyone not watch this dynamic and be compelled by its narrative, by its inevitable outcomes?

And people like Angel Gurria fascinate me perhaps most of all, because Gurria probably thinks he means well. These dogsbodies of the merchant princes, they should know better -- I mean, they do know how to read fucking spreadsheets and charts, right? But they seem sincere in their convictions that if "we" just made "opportunities" available for "them" to bootstrap themselves, the problem would solve itself. No matter how much evidence over the last generation is available and observable, they faithfully hew to their standard "remedies" -- go through the "higher education" racket, get balls-deep in debt so you can get a better job (doing what?), spend most of your working life trying to repay that debt and not get your job shipped to Asia. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So I mentioned that this situation is simpler to resolve than the Serious People make it out to be, and it is. But there has to be willingness to use carrots and sticks on everyone, not just carrots for the owners and sticks for the peons. Incentivize keeping companies stateside and not exporting labor. Incentivize paying a living wage. Disincentivize screwing your workers, the way shitheel companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's have become accustomed to doing. Make corporations pay their fucking taxes. Disincentivize offshoring profits. Disincentivize overcharging for college education. Start a massive infrastructure work project, like Eisenhower did with the interstate highways. Enact a 1-2% redistributive tax on the "high net worth" assholes, say, anyone with over $10M in wealth. Spread it around. Institute a one-time debt jubilee, paying down either a certain percentage or amount of interest-bearing debt on people's homes and educations (which are usury and overcharging in the first place). The Masters might be surprised at how quickly the economy surges from such measures, and everyone, including the owners, would actually profit from these measures. After all, if the peons have more money, they will buy more stuff. Shocking, I know.

Obviously none of this will ever happen, but what's really pathetic and disheartening is that no one with access to the corporate media would even consider mentioning such things. If there's a system that's incredibly self-regulating, it is the system that manufactures "official" opinion and consent. And the pillaging of the rentier class will persist for exactly as long as the peons are willing to put up with it.

Dork by Dork West

I'm not above occasionally checking out some fake hairy Persian titties; it's my Sattiday mawnin' cartoon jam, yo. But what's really hilarious is her idiot old man's self-fellation at the 'roo:

"I ain't going after nobody on the radio," he said, according to The Associated Press. "I'm going after Shakespeare, I'm going after Walt Disney. I'm going after Howard Hughes. I'm going after Genghis Khan. I'm going after Henry Ford..."

Uh-huh. Sure. Check out Shitspeare in all his lyrical glory, just as a f'rxample. Forget the historical incoherence (Romans versus Trojans? At the Battle of Thermopylae? Does he not have people who can Google this shit for him, at least? Do "Spartans" and "Persians" suddenly not rhyme? Should I be ashamed at doing a close reading of a moron like Kanye West?), he just flat fucking sucks as a writer, even by the impossibly low standards of this sort of music.

At the risk of one, stating the obvious, and two, sounding like a cheesy self-help author, one of the essential keys to "greatness" is doing something that most other people cannot do. Read those Black Skinhead words aloud to yourself, if you can do so without giggling. It's pretty standard repetitive junior-high woofing, that literally just about anyone could do. No fresh insight, nothing interesting in the rhyme scheme, none of the things that talented hip-hop artists actually do. It's just awful.

I know, complaining about a jagoff like Kanye West is like complaining about the weather. Soon as his fifteen minutes are up, some other no-talent asshole will take his place. Still, it would be nice to find out for sure, just to watch this dickhead go away, and hopefully take his fucking Autotune machine with him.

The Enema Within

So we have our first truly hilarious midterm moment of the season -- future Speaker of the House Eric Cantor gets drummed out in the wild-card round by some Randroid econ tool from a small private college. Worth its weight in comedy gold.

The teabaggers have the establishment dorks on the run, and it is fun to watch. Thad Cochran barely managed to coast on the miniscule goodwill generated by his opponent's shenanigans enough to qualify for a runoff against said opponent. Huckleberry Closetcase beat back his primary opponents, but mostly because there were six of them splintered against him, and Huck has standing invitations to free-advertise on all the Sunday morning circle jerks.

On the one hand, getcha popcorn, and simply bide your time until stupid people live down to their names, and say stupid things, and other stupid people vote for them regardless. On the other hand, if the Democrats want to at least give the impression that they're not just dickless corporate stooges, they are going to have to up their game. How else is La Hillary s'posta get her turn in '16?

Deep Thought

Having Oliver North on your news program to advise on the ethics and practicality of negotiating with terrorists for hostages is pretty much like having John Wayne Gacy show you how to optimize your crawlspace.

Look, I don't know if Bowe Bergdahl is a deserter or not, and neither do you. But I think we all know this -- Obama could have rescued Santa Claus from an al Qaeda torture chamber, power drill embedded in his fibula, and liquidated the bastards, and these fucking people would have found something to complain about.

Takin' Care of Business

Never were we told, we'd be bought and sold, when we were innocent. -- Fuel, Innocent

I missed this missive from Brother Orlov a couple weeks ago, but it is spot-on, as any casual observer should be able to tell. At least at the national level, your vote, even if it's not suppressed, even if it's "for" someone rather than merely "against" an opponent, is a waste, a piss in the wind, something to be ignored en masse.

This should be laid out in simple terms of procession, as often as possible:  The political system is owned and operated by a very small group of very wealthy individuals and corporations. This same oligarchical class also --coincidentally, mind you -- happens to own all of the major canals of disseminating points of information and discussion, not just the networks who provide content, but the physical modes by which said content is transported. To the extent that this class appears to tolerate any meaningful form of dissent or reform, it is almost entirely illusional.

Consider the rise and flail of one Barack Hussein Obama, who was seen at his first investiture in 2008 as a genuinely transformational figure, someone who not only could but desired to engage in systemic reform, and could communicate this on an intellectually honest level. Welp, how has that all turned out? You can -- and should -- defend Obama to a great extent by reiterating the blatant, shameless obstructionism of the teahadis in the House, but you must also accept that Obama has too often been diffident and passive in the face of their idiocy and hostility.

I said it when it happened, and I'll say it again -- there are two things that happened very early on after Obama's first election that he could and should have straightened out. The first incident occurred at the '08 Republican National Convention, where Joe Lieberman ratfucked Obama (and yes, you whinging assholes who are still crying about Ralph Nader, I want you to consider what sort of vice-president this shameless cocksucker would have been). The first thing Obama should have done after winning that election was wall-slam the esteemed senior fuckface from Connecticut and explain to him in no uncertain terms how shit was going to roll from here on out. Instead, he fucking hugged him. Shit, why don't you knit him a fucking sweater while you're at it, wash his car or something? Jesus H. Christ.

The second major opportunity missed was when Obama held a (giggle) health care address in September of 2009, and pigfucker Addison Graves "Call me Joe, because that's a man's name" Wilson decided to impress his colleagues by heckling Obama, shouting "You lie!" not once, but twice during the speech. Now, someone who's serious about not being pushed around by bidness-as-usual assholes would be on the phone to their party chairman the next day, and instruct them to spend $50m in the next election to push that motherless fuck out, if that's what it took. They gave it a token shot in 2010, but didn't even bother to run an opponent against Wilson in 2012. Balls to the wall, amirite?

You might (rightly) say, "Well, jeez, Heywood, what can ya do? We have to reach across the aisle, forge a consensus, politics is the art of the possible, blahbedy-blah-blah." Fair enough, and believe it or not, I agree with the principle of that. But I also recognize when a bully is trying to test defenses and pushbacks, and the only way, unfortunately, to beat such people back is to go full fucking apeshit on them. Before Obama had been in office for a full year, the Republicans understood that he was willing to take shit from them, and that bolstered their resolve to thumb their dicks and obstruct everything he proposed.

So when the honest post-mortem on this administration gets written, if it ever gets written, it will have to state at or near the top that one, Obama failed to accomplish much of what he said he'd do and set out to do; and two, that this was primarily because of an inability to assert himself convincingly with his opponents -- in short, people who laugh at you will never work with you or concede to you. On anything.

These days, I have two recurring dreams, desires, whatever you want to call them. One is some sort of rich-uncle windfall coming in, and I cash out and move to Costa Rica or Croatia or somewhere, and see what life is like outside the toxic circle. The second, more contemporaneous of these idealized visions is a scenario where "we" the "people" are presented by our corporate insect overlords with a "choice" between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. And we say "fuck you very much," and act and react accordingly. We stop pretending, we stop legitimizing this bullshit, we stop hoping that someone, anyone upstairs gives a red-hot monkey-fuck about anyone besides themselves, we stop waiting for crumbs from the table that never seem to come.

I mean, neither of those things will ever happen, but one has to hold out some sense of hope.

Money Grab

I guess the thrill of hosting the Olympics is now officially gone, and good riddance. Notice that not a single one of the venues listed in the Deadspin article is in the US. Not that we're above that, mind you; there's never a shortage of municipalities begging to force its own citizens to build a playground for millionaires playing for teams owned by billionaires.

Watching the Olympics used to be a thrill when I was a kid; I still remember watching the Innsbruck and Montreal Games in 1976. There wasn't a particular favorite sport, but certainly the various "death on ice" events -- your bobsled, your giant slalom, etc., were exciting, the gymnasts were impressive, and the camaraderie and competition between athletes from various nations seemed evident.

But now it's just a big ol' hustle, stuffed with inane "human interest" stories and infinite commercials on an endless loop. I mean, they have to recoup the money somehow, we all get that. But it's about as entertaining and inspiring as watching flies fuck (as my kindly great-grandmother used to say in Sunday school).

Even people who enjoy watching sports -- and I'm definitely one of them; I watch a decent amount of NBA and MLB during playoff seasons, and am pretty much encyclopedic on college and pro football at this point -- have to admit that it's at best a diversion from real, pervasive issues, and at worst a system that grinds up the bodies of young men for the costly amusement of fans, the expense of taxpayers, and the benefit of owners only.

The Olympics have fallen into this trap as well; long ago, they abandoned the pretense of "amateur" -- as in, non-professional -- competitors on the world stage, which makes the whole thing even more of a shameless joke. It's sad, but it's up to people whether they want to keep supporting this racket or not.

Marketing to the Choir

Fundamentalists of any religion are, by definition, obsessed with their own certitude, and the need for everyone else to abide by their divine pipeline. I suppose the primary difference (and perhaps, if you'll pardon the pun, the saving grace) of the Christian fundamentalist, as opposed to the violent psychopathy of the Islamic fundamentalist, is that the Christian is first and foremost American, which means that his primary purpose is sales.

Case in point:  this guy, who has apparently written 25 books (probably all about the same thing, something along the lines of "Jesus really loves you, but God is getting sick of your decadent bullshit and will burn you in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity, so put down the cock!"). While the headline gulls one into believing that the article will describe "America's Greatest Moral Crisis," (which of course is abortion and homosexuality and such like, and totally not, as some hippie dude once put it, the love of money, so stop it you guys!) one is treated to such a cobbled-together pastiche of pull quotes and self-tributes, it becomes almost impossible to tell what parts of this slapdash exercise qualify as new, fresh thought.

I mean, it's still a damn sight better than whipping or executing people for being gay, or committing adultery, or marrying someone of another faith. But even a hard-boiled atheist skeptic wants to see a more challenging, developed level of thought and ideas in their faith-based counterparts, not this stylized ipse dixit jabber. Batman wants to go up against the Joker, not some junkie pickpocket trying to shake down little old ladies with a finger gun pointing through the pocket of his tattered hoodie. This transparent "buy one of my books" schtick, masquerading as a serious thought piece, is just downright embarrassing.

Plumbing the Depths

Folks, d'ya remember a cartoon character from the 2008 preznitential campaignsideshow, bald-headed galoot who went by the name "Joe the Plumber," who reified the teatard teleology of the self-made bootstrapper making his way in this socialist paradise, in spite of libtards' attempts to hold back his greatness? Yeah, that guy.

So apparently "Joe," in between plumbing gigs, has returned to his self-anointed role as vox populi for the low-forehead set, and written an "open letter" to gunsplain to the parents of the victims in the Isla Vista shooting, you know, 72 hours ago. Certainly no one else on the professional or amateur opinion-mongering circuit (uh, including your humble blog proprietor right here) has waited for the bodies to get cold before analyzing the situation.

But Wurzelbacher's trite, paranoid manifesto brings another dimension to the notion of, well, insensitivity. (Not to mention, you know, the ludicrous proposition that there was actually a person out there observing the coverage thus far of this tragedy, and saying to themselves, "You know what? I wonder what that 'Joe the Plumber' dude, the guy whose first name is not Joe and is not really a licensed plumber, thinks about this whole rotten mess.")

"[Y]our dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights"? Seriously, this is the best way to frame a response to a grieving father who just lost his kid hours before, who hasn't even had a chance to bury him? Who does this? Well, we know who does this, but still, as always -- what the hell is wrong with these people?

There's a minimal chance that any meaningful debate about gun control will arise from the Isla Vista tragedy, whether it's initiated by a grief-stricken parent or an opportunistic politician. In fact, no politician who isn't bulletproof in their incumbency will even suggest that any actual measures be taken. You know it, I know it, Richard Martinez knows it, the NRA knows it, and Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher knows it as well.

The public has become inured and desensitized to these events, as they happen with regularity, and the gun culture (there clearly is such a thing; in fact, of all the voices that clamor after these routine tragedies, theirs is always the loudest and most strident) steeps a sufficient amount of people, apparently besotted with action-movie heroism tropes, into sincerely believing that one thing that could have prevented or altered Elliot Rodger's bizarre rampage was a "good guy" with a gun.

And as I mentioned before, it's hard to tell exactly where any real suggestions as to gun control would have prevented this. Rodger purchased his guns legally, months ago, in California, which has rigorous background checks and waiting periods. Now, if Rodger had had to purchase insurance on the firearms he bought, the way he (or someone) had to pay insurance on the BMW and Mercedes daddy bought for him to drive around Santa Barbara, there might have been a different dynamic in play. Perhaps not, but the idea might have merit in discussion.

And this is where the gun activists lose the thread. For them, since the Second Amendment is a constitutional right and is therefore impermeable and unalterable, no discussion is allowed. There is no room for debate, because as far as they're concerned, it would be like debating the merits of breathing air, drinking water, eating food. (Of course, since these folks usually find themselves on the side of unconscionable polluters, those particular issues tend to resolve themselves with some regularity as well, as a cursory glance at red-state life expectancy will demonstrate.)

Of course some of the chatter, on either side, in the wake of tragedies like is going to be cynical, self-serving, opportunistic. But even honest questions and debate get shouted down now; even legitimate protests and disagreements are dealt with by intimidation and harassment. They may revere their immutable interpretation of the Second Amendment, but they clearly have nothing but contempt for the First.

Planet of the Apes

You know, there's rarely an opportunity missed to take cheap shots at 'murkin culcher burble, slack-jawed fish-in-a-barrel watch-the-neighbors-sort-their-sock-drawers crap that we all get saturated in, or the deeper, darker, oppression of minorities, gays, women, etc. Those things are all true.

Yet this sort of thing puts all of the above to shame. Or this. The people, the cultures that perpetrate "honor killing" or execution for "apostasy" are nothing more than a skid mark on humanity's collective underwear. They have nothing to offer, nothing to add to the world. It needs to be said.

Even when they're not murdering their daughters for imaginary transgressions, they oppress them every moment of their lives, covering them in beekeeper suits, marrying them to their own cousins, beating them to keep them cowed. They have a pathological hatred of women, one that makes your garden-variety pro-life goofball in America look like an amateur.

There are knuckle-dragging assholes everywhere, but the ones in the "Islamic republics" seem to be determined to show up everyone else. Folks, it ain't a contest. The rest of the world just looks at your toxic behavior and wonders what the hell is wrong with you.

[Update 5/29/14 19:00 PDT:  It gets better. These people are just all kinds of awesome.]

Ladies' Man

In the wake of the Isla Vista killings a couple days ago, it's certainly not shocking but might still catch some (including yours truly) unawares that there is something called a "pick-up artist [PUA] community." If you have the stomach to wade through such guff, you're a better person than me, but from the Slate article one can still glean the basics -- that these communities are populated by men who hate women (or at least view them as things to be acquired by any means necessary) and probably hate themselves and each other as well.

Certainly there are "alphas" and "betas" in this world, and the trope of the "nice guy" getting "friend-zoned" by his heart's desire is the staple of many a rom-com over the years. This is not in dispute. I suppose my puzzlement with this "community" thing of stratifying and stat-ifying "the game" is that, while it is a game, the rules are simpler than these doofuses seem to understand.

[Edit:  I had a half-dozen or so common-sense "rules" worked up for your entertainment, but decided to punt because it came out sounding uncomfortably close to these bro-douche PUA assholes. The basics of it should be obvious to anyone who isn't emotionally or socially stunted -- go out with your friends once in a while, because that's how you meet new people; don't overthink it or fixate on a person you barely know; be self-aware of things you may need to work on.

Perhaps most importantly, talk to women as if they're human beings, and not "objects" of your "affection." See previous advice about being self-aware. And relax -- you're trying to get laid, not come up with a cure for cancer. Look at some of the other folks getting laid. How hard can it be, really?]

You look at the self-inflicted trauma of someone like Elliot Rodger, and all you can do is wonder. Here's a kid who had money and toys at his disposal, and at least some connections that women would dig. But, uh, I'm gonna go out on a limb and speculate that anyone who barfs up a 140-page manifesto about he's going to torture and slaughter the whores who didn't see what a knight in shining armor he was, there's someone who could have benefited from the above Obvious Rules.

Same with the PUA guys. These poor bastards have channeled their inability to self reflect into this weird obsession with developing a method or process to snagging that smokin' hot babe. This sense of entitlement permeates popular culture; every year, there's a number of popular movies and teevee shows featuring some fat schlub punching way above his weight -- say, Kevin James married to Salma Hayek. Notice that this never happens in the opposite direction; you are never going to see a movie with, say, Melissa McCarthy married to Brad Pitt.

This gets reinforced and conditioned over the years, until you get a particular strain of tool who thinks he's entitled to the hottest chick in the room. These guys (okay, okay, I did check out the PUA site a bit; I had to rubberneck at the 50-car pile-up), once you drill down a bit, really seem to be motivated by the urge to "get back" at the cute chick they obsessed over in high school, but who failed to see their awesomeness and drop to her knees forthwith.

So they buy into this "neuro-linguistic programming" schtick, and think they can basically hypnotize or convince any woman they talk to into jumping their bones. Inevitably they are disappointed when they try out their "game" and it doesn't work. Or it does work, and they get laid, but fireworks and rainbows don't shoot out of her ass, and they feel gypped. After all, they were entitled to having their greatness validated.

Just as rape is not really a crime of sex, so much as a crime of power and assertion, so does this PUA thing come across less as an effort to find love or sex or even an emotional connection with another human being, but an attempt to claim status and peer recognition. Where most Americans have been properly conditioned to self-actualize by acquiring money and toys and jacked-up four-by pick-em-up trucks to compensate for lack of penile girth, these twits have convinced themselves that they need to overthink what, for even average guys, is one of the easier things in life to do -- get laid.

Press the Meat

Driftglass brings up some nice points regarding the esteemed institution of the Sunday morning punditocracy. One would think that the holiday weekend had a substantial role in yesterday's Meet the Press being pre-empted by F1 racing.

The question still remains, though:  who watches this shit, especially on a regular basis. Do you watch any of these idiotic Sunday morning fuckfests, do you know anyone who does? I sure as hell don't on both counts. Most people will say that life is too short, and weekends are spent in infinitely better ways than tuning in to liars being interviewed and analyzed by insular chumps.

These people are talking to each other, not to any of us. Politics, never a respectable pastime in the first place, is now rather transparently just another racket, in a nation run by rackets. It was already a foregone conclusion by the time the two-ply bumwipe known as Citizens United passed through SCOTUS (yet another American institution that has outlived its usefulness) like a pork tamale from a disreputable taco truck.

But the CU (next Tuesday) ruling sealed the deal, legitimized the blatantly transactional nature of the American political system. The total 2012 election spending topped $7 billion. More than $2 bn was spent by the two major candidates for president. The bulk of all that money was raised and/or donated by large contributors. It is not merely naïve to suppose that the large donors, and the corporations who own the networks which broadcast the Sunday morning follies, don't have directly vested interests in the outcomes of these rituals -- it is flat-out stupid to not understand intrinsically the power and purpose of those connections.

Chomsky laid this all out more than 25 years ago in Manufacturing Consent, but the point bears repeating -- there is no hidden, dark conspiracy, no oaths or rituals sworn in smoke-filled backrooms. This is all out in the open. The hyper-concentration of ownership of these resources is self-perpetuating, and anyone wanting to enter the game knows this before they even get into the game. Any and every talking head we gawp at on any given day, or time of day, knows what the rules are, without even having to have those rules explained to them.

For every outlier like, say, Bill Moyers, there are two hundred Erin Burnetts or David Gregorys. Hell, when was the last time you saw Noam Chomsky on your teevee, versus the usual rotation of known liars, calumniators, and just lazy thinkers, giving bad or false analysis of a situation they know jack shit about? These things are not by accident, but by design -- there are large, grotesque amounts of money in play these days, and these fuckers aren't taking any chances.

The buildup to the big Battle of the Dynasties, Hillary versus Jeb, will continue apace, people will show up like they think have a real choice, and then the second after the winner is anointed in 2016, the circle jerk to 2020 begins anew. It is an industry in the truest sense of the word.

The Virgin Suicides

So we kick off our We Honor Our Soldiers With Bullshit Health Care Weekend with a massacre that has some strange locational and motivational parallels. More than anything, it's a deep, disturbing look into the fevered brain of a young man that should have had the world laid out right in front of him, but for some reason couldn't make anything of it. It's brutal to read, but provides a ton of context.

There is the temptation to blame the "gun culture", the NRA, and politicians for this horror. That's understandable; on a planet full of assholes, Wayne LaPierre certainly stands tall in that regard. And you could make a reasonable argument as to the Glock 34's standard 17-round (33 optional!) magazine capacity. But as of now, it appears that Elliot Rodger purchased his guns legally, went through California's waiting period and background checks, the whole nine yards.

If it were an illegally obtained AK-47, it would be a different story. It would be easy money chastising the usual gun nuts over their callous indifference to tragedies such as these. But this is not one of those instances, tragic as it is.

The more you read the excerpts of Rodger's sketchy manifesto, you have to wonder. In a world where most average schmucks seem to have few obstacles to getting laid, how is it that a privileged kid who drives high-end German automobiles, and whose dad just happens to be an assistant director on one of the hotter movie franchises right now, can't get any action? Who knows? The details will come out soon enough, if we allow ourselves to catch our collective breath.

Chances are, even if Rodger's fantasy had come true, it wouldn't have satisfied him, wouldn't have silenced whatever demons were driving him. As we all know (I mean you all have had sex before right?), sex is great, an important part of life, but people who have this vision built up in their heads of sex being the absolute pinnacle of human existence are inevitably doomed to disappointment.

These big, crazy tragedies happen far too often, because we are a big, crazy nation, desensitized to violence, attuned to easy sexual gratification, and affixed to social ranking amongst our peers. There is always the impulse to assume, to presume that Something Must (Or Can, Or Should) Be Done when these things happen. Sometimes we can do something, sometimes we can't. This is an example of the latter.

Given that Elliot Rodger appears to have legally purchased his firearm, as is his right, curtailing the existing rights of gun owners as a response would be as irresponsible and unreasonable as taking people's vehicles away as a response to David Attias mowing down coeds in his Saab thirteen years ago. Of course, the opposite will happen; nothing will be done and the whole terrible event will go down the memory hole with all the others. That's not much better.

Cowards

Over the years I think I've been a pretty consistent supporter of the 2nd Amendment as written, with reasonable constraints. This is based on the notion that, despite the unspeakable tragedies that almost routinely take place with firearms in these here Yewnighted States, it is simply unrealistic to try to engage in any meaningful confiscatory actions, given that there are more guns than people here; and more importantly, it is simply wrong (beyond enforcing and instituting reasonable regulations and restrictions) to punish the majority of responsible gun owners and users for the actions of a demented few.

That said, incidents like these [via Balloon Juice] certainly make a case for just saying fuck it, and taking away some toys from some assholes. I'm pretty sure that the Founding Fathers did not have these thumb-dick losers in mind when they conceived of armed self-defense against the encroachment of tyranny.